


Hob's Lantern

by rosefox



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Autumn, Family, Fluff, Gen, Halloween, Night, Post-Canon, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Pre-Canon, ToT: Chocolate Box, Trick or Treat 2017, Trick or Treat: Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-18 23:20:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12398343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/pseuds/rosefox
Summary: Two boyhood pranks, a generation apart.





	Hob's Lantern

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Spacecadet72](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spacecadet72/gifts).



_October, 1822_

Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy had not been meant to hear the quiet sniffle from the back of the stable, but he heard it all the same. He found Master James Darcy in his accustomed hiding place in the last stall.

When James heard his father coming, he rubbed at his face with a handkerchief, which only smeared the tear-streaked dirt. "Leave it," Mr. Darcy said softly, crouching in the old straw. "Come back to the house and we'll get you cleaned up properly. What have they done now?" James, a boy of nine years who had inherited neither physical stature nor forthright manner from his parents, was a favorite target of the mischief-minded village lads. 

The boy stood obediently, but he pinched his lips tightly shut, and Mr. Darcy had to repeat the question. Finally, James said, "I was on my way home from Davison's, and Chivvers had set up a hob's lantern on the hedge, and in the dark, it..." He trailed off. 

"You were frightened," Mr. Darcy said. James nodded, miserable and ashamed.

When Mrs. Darcy first laid infant James in her husband's arms, she informed him—with perhaps unnecessary but understandable vigor—that she expected his labor in the rearing of their children to equal her own. Nearing ten years later, Mr. Darcy was still often baffled by the obligations and rituals of fatherhood. He had endeavored to follow the excellent example of his own sire, but he believed his efforts paltry, and had confessed to Mrs. Darcy upon several occasions that he thought the task beyond even his great intellectual capacity; to which the insightful woman had replied, "It is not your intellect that need be employed, but your heart." Mr. Darcy believed himself even more deficient in this regard, but were he to breathe a word of such thoughts to his wife, he felt quite certain she would declaim in such a fashion as to greatly embarrass him, so he kept his own counsel. 

In the matter of hob's lanterns and frightened boys, however, Mr. Darcy was possessed of that most useful tool of the resourceful father: a story.

"Your uncle Wickham did much the same to me upon a time," he said, raising his lamp to lead them out of the stable. James looked shocked and then giggled. (He would have to remind the boy that Darcys did not giggle—but later.) "And I was no child but nearly a man grown."

"Awful Uncle Wickham!" Mr. Darcy knew that he ought to discourage such disparagement of one's elders, but as he could not disagree with the boy's choice of words, he let it pass. "Truly? How did it happen, Father?"

Mr. Darcy found it easy, as they emerged into the gloom and started down the path to the house, to remember another October evening—a quarter-century past, he realized with a shock—and tell the tale.

_October, 1797_

It was half past five, near dark, and Darcy was beginning to wish he'd brought a light; but he knew the wood behind Pemberley so well that it often seemed the path rose up under his feet to guide him home. He shivered in the late October chill, thrust his hands into his coat pockets, and quickened his pace. His father's steward, Wickham, would be at dinner with his son, a fractious and unmannerly boy to whom Darcy was expected to show civility. He did not enjoy the thought of it, but duty required his presence, and the dinner hour approached. 

A storm had recently come through and downed several limbs, and navigating past them required his full attention, so he failed to see the demon until he was nearly upon it. He started back with an oath. Its grinning, glowing face seemed to hover in the gloom, a disembodied devil that smirked as though it knew every one of the salacious thoughts that crept into Darcy's mind late at night in the privacy of his chamber. (Being but lately turned fourteen, he had a great many of these thoughts.) Beyond it he could see the silhouette of the great house against the deep, fading blue of the evening sky, but the creature barred his way.

He straightened his spine. He was Fitzwilliam Darcy of Pemberley and no mere spirit of the wood— _his_ wood, by God—would get the better of him.

Looking about, he spied a heavy fallen branch and seized it. He advanced upon the demon at a prudent pace, but not only did it fail to retreat, it veritably winked at him, and its eerie smile seemed to grow. Enraged, he swung the branch at it with all his might, crying, "For God and King George!"

The cudgel struck its mark with a solid _thwack_ and the infernal creature's head came clean off its shoulders, flying into the night. Righteously and with no small amount of belated terror, Darcy aimed a kick at its squat body—and shouted as his toe, fortunately well armored in a new boot, encountered a broad and very solid tree stump.

From his right came a shriek of familiar laughter, confirming his sudden suspicion as to the provenance of the ostensible demon. "Wickham," he growled, the effect rather spoiled by a hinge-creak in his youthful voice.

"'For God and King George!'" Wickham mocked him, unshuttering his lantern as he came onto the path. He pressed one hand to his side, chuckling. "Do you fancy yourself a soldier, Darcy? A hero for the ages? You have certainly vanquished my poor swede with your mighty arm." He raised the lantern and went off among the trees, returning a moment later with a dented turnip that appeared to have been painted with boot-blacking. The stump of a candle was still wedged inside its central hollow, and in the roughly carved eyes and mouth, Darcy recognized the supposed devil. Reluctantly—and privately, as he would sooner drink from a horse-trough than speak a word of praise to Wickham—he was impressed; to turn even a rather small turnip into a lantern required more dedicated effort than he had believed to be within Wickham's capacity. 

Indeed, the true devil was the one who stood before him, holding out the battered vegetable. "A trophy," Wickham said. "To display upon your mantel that all may recognize the prowess of Pemberley's heir."

"You rotten little blighter!" Darcy snatched the turnip and flung it at Wickham's head.

The other boy ducked it easily and trotted off toward the house, still laughing. "Hurry, Darcy, it won't do to be late for dinner!"

Fuming, Darcy dropped the branch and stalked after his nemesis, muttering oaths and imprecations as he scrubbed sticky blacking off his hand with his handkerchief. He would rather stay in the wood eating acorns than face Wickham across the table—but the pestilential fellow had the lantern. He followed its light back to Pemberley, plotting his revenge.

_1822_

In the time it had taken to relate these events, the elder and younger Darcys had successfully reached the nursery unobserved. James was laughing openly, all his own sorrows forgotten, as he dipped the rag in the basin and finished washing his face. "And what revenge did you take?" 

"At the time, none! My father—to whom I confessed shamefacedly, much as you did—told me it was unbecoming for a gentleman to engage in such behavior." Mr. Darcy gave James a pointed look. "And you will likewise refrain from responding in kind to the village lads."

James's "Yes, Father" was perhaps a bit sullen, but Mr. Darcy felt it acceptable.

"Take heart," he said, handing the boy a towel. "The hand of Providence has guided Wickham and myself in such directions as to make any sort of retribution unnecessary, and so it will be for you. Someday, God grant many years hence, you will be the Darcy in Pemberley. And Chivvers will not."

"He seems very pleased to be himself," James observed.

"As does Wickham," said Mr. Darcy dryly. "But I assure you it is a far greater pleasure to be a Darcy."

"It is, or I should not have chosen to become one," Mrs. Darcy said, entering the nursery.

"And by doing so you have made it surpassingly enjoyable to be one," Mr. Darcy said. His facility with such compliments had been greatly improved by his wife's evident fondness for receiving them.

He was rewarded with her quick, lovely smile before she turned to her son. "James, ought not you to have dressed for bed already? Nanny will be up shortly with a bit of bread and milk for your tea."

"Yes, Mother, only I was about to come down and say goodnight." He kissed her on the cheek; she returned it and then took his father's arm.

"Goodnight, James," Mr. Darcy said, and he was whisked downstairs by his wife.

"What were you on about?" Mrs. Darcy said, settling into a chair near the fire. "A pleasure to be a Darcy? Not, as I have said, that I disagree."

Mr. Darcy took his own chair and related the tale of Chivvers's lantern, and then of Wickham's. "And so," he concluded, only a little stiffly, as she enjoyed a chuckle at his expense, "I explained to young James that we do far better to wait and see how the dice will roll than to take matters into our own hands. For see how superior my life is to Wickham's in every way: a grander home, a cleaner conscience, a greater status, and a finer wife." 

Mrs. Darcy regarded this pronouncement with some skepticism. "So I am no more than a reward to you for having forborne to leave a frog in Wickham's bed?"

Mr. Darcy captured her hand and kissed it. "Far more," he said. "If I credit Providence, it is only for the certain knowledge that my own poor charms alone could never have sufficed to win you to my side." 

"Why, no," Mrs. Darcy rejoined, quite mollified, "I believe much is also owed to my own good sense in the matter of selecting a husband." 

The clock chimed and they rose, with no little regret, to go in to dinner. Mr. Darcy offered his wife his arm, and she took it with an impish smile. "I must warn you," she said, "I do believe tonight's menu includes buttered turnips."

"I thank you for the courtesy," he said gravely, "for now I will not be so alarmed to encounter them that I strike out mightily with my fork in defense of our lives and souls."

They went into the dining room, laughing, as the autumn night settled over Pemberley House.

**Author's Note:**

> "In my juvenile days I remember to have seen peasant boys make, what they called a 'Hoberdy's Lantern,' by hollowing out a turnip, and cutting eyes, nose, and mouth therein, in the true moon-like style; and having lighted it up by inserting the stump of a candle, they used to place it upon a hedge to frighten unwary travellers in the night." —Jabez Allies, _The British, Roman, and Saxon Antiquities and Folklore of Worcestershire_ , 1856.
> 
> Thanks to ardentaislinn and magpie mountains for the beta!


End file.
